Shaping Balanced Political Discourse and Constructive Narratives on Migration: Guidance and Good Practice from the OSCE Region

With the aim of encouraging constructive and human rights-centred political discourse, thisguidance targets national, regional and local political leaders and decision-makers. This guidanceis built around three ‘Rs’, designed to help politicians and government officials:

• Resist pressure to compete with other actors who produce toxic narratives, or to take up theirlanguage or strategies, and avoid sensationalized ways of discussing migration issues thatinvolve stereotypes;

• React to instances of xenophobic and racist language, particularly within your own group,emphasize that such narratives are unacceptable and challenge disinformation on migrationissues; and

• Re-shape migration discourse by using available opportunities or creating the conditionsneeded to pro-actively shape affirmative, evidence-based narratives underpinned by sharedvalues and illustrated by positive stories.